Super (un)scientific psychic testing!
A friend of mine e-mailed me after I sent her a link to this blog proclaiming that one of us must be psychic. Her reasoning: She was thinking of starting her own blog on her own web domain yesterday, and today when she got online, she saw that I had done exactly that. She knows I don't believe in the supernatural, and that includes psychic abilities, so she joked that since I refused to admit it was me, it must be her.
So I decided to test my psychic abilities.
My guy and I performed two tests:
1. Try to guess the number that will come up on one rolled die.
Out of 40 rolls, I guessed correctly eleven times. This is actually far above chance. To be average, I would have had to have six or seven correct guesses. My Guy guessed correctly three times - far below chance.
2. Try to guess whether the other person is thinking of the number 1, or number 2. For this, my guy or I would say, "go" and then think, " 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1" or " 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ". The other person would try to guess. We did this 12 times each. I guessed correctly 6 times, and he guessed correctly 5 times.
Some people might say that I am slightly psychic, and my Guy is slightly unpsychic due to the dice rolling test. But statistically, even though I had an above-average number of hits, this one test alone does not put me outside of the realm of standard chance. It's simple statistics to realize that if you've got 40 dice rolles, most people will get an average number of hits, some people will get a below or above the average number of hits, and some people will be VERY above or below the average number of hits. One test is not enough to show anything at all. Now, if I performed this test 100 times and still scored above average, we might have something going on.
So I decided to test my psychic abilities.
My guy and I performed two tests:
1. Try to guess the number that will come up on one rolled die.
Out of 40 rolls, I guessed correctly eleven times. This is actually far above chance. To be average, I would have had to have six or seven correct guesses. My Guy guessed correctly three times - far below chance.
2. Try to guess whether the other person is thinking of the number 1, or number 2. For this, my guy or I would say, "go" and then think, " 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1" or " 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 ". The other person would try to guess. We did this 12 times each. I guessed correctly 6 times, and he guessed correctly 5 times.
Some people might say that I am slightly psychic, and my Guy is slightly unpsychic due to the dice rolling test. But statistically, even though I had an above-average number of hits, this one test alone does not put me outside of the realm of standard chance. It's simple statistics to realize that if you've got 40 dice rolles, most people will get an average number of hits, some people will get a below or above the average number of hits, and some people will be VERY above or below the average number of hits. One test is not enough to show anything at all. Now, if I performed this test 100 times and still scored above average, we might have something going on.
Labels: psychic abilities, science, skepticism, statistics, testing
posted by Ziztur
at
10:00 AM
2 Comments:
fun post, but one point. to use the word unpsychic to describe somebody who always guesses wrong is in fact not correct. instead this would indicate a good psychic ability but somehow reversed.
consider the standard blind taste test for pepsi and coke. if you are given 10 chances to differentiate between coke and pepsi and get it wrong 10 times, you probably can differentiate, but have just remembered the tastes wrong.
You'll note that I didn't say that unpsychic describes people who always guesses wrong. If you were to show me an individual who always guesses wrong in a way that is statistically anomalous, that might lend credence to your theory. Otherwise, it is just post hoc reasoning.
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